Wednesday October 3rd kicked off the first of the series of Presidential Debates between Republican candidate Mitt Romney and Democratic candidate Barack Obama. The Governor of Massachusetts and the current President verbally battled over such topics as the economy and healthcare. President Obama looked tired and weary, and polls showed that this didn’t help the Democratic candidate. However, the Democratic candidate was the one to actually elaborate on his policies and what he would do in office. He promised to create more opportunities for education, invest in teaching and energies, and continue with his “Obamacare,” a term coined by the Republican Party to describe Obama’s universal health care plan, which the President now uses as a term of endearment. He made almost no change to his previous policies, supporting new energies and education, wanting instead to continue on his path and move forward with what he left off; his campaign slogan is “Forward” after all.It was hard to understand both candidates of course, but if you take the time to sit down and analyze their language, you’ll understand that Obama was using it to make his words sound eloquent and to help make his ideas sound better to the public, while Romney used it to cover up that, during almost the entirety of the debate, he was just attacking the President’s previous term. Although many would agree that Romney brought more confidence and empathy to his performance, his decorum and use of the rhetorical appeals just covers up the fact that he has no clear plan. He did make a few things clear, though. He promised to create new markets and help small businesses, and to repeal Obamacare.

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Controversy and laughter did come at certain moments, of course. Obama’s remark to moderator Jim Lehrer about having “5 seconds before you interrupted me” and Romney’s comment about how much he “loves Big Bird” while talking about cutting funding to NBC brought a little comic relief. Both candidates’ resistance to staying within the allotted time period, and Romney’s stuttering and the fact that he cut off Jim Lehrer so many times was a source of criticism among viewers.Surprisingly, Obama refrained from mentioning Romney’s Bain Capital controversy, which has to do with the question of whether or not he paid all of his taxes while working at the multimillion dollar corporation, while Romney took the opportunity to point out all of the things that went wrong in the past four years. However, Obama did shake down Romney’s plan to privatize health insurance and the fact that he changed his economic policy regarding tax cuts.Personally, I agree with Obama’s policies more than Romney’s; Obama has a more community oriented background than Romney, who studied business. Romney wants to cut taxes among the corporations by 25%, stating that “corporations are people too,” in an earlier speech. This would put a strain on middle class America. His policy to repeal Obamacare, the universal health care plan that would help out people with preexisting conditions and others who would generally be rejected by private insurance companies would cause more harm than good. The previous presidential terms have been some of the worst we’ve ever seen as a country; you can’t fix the mistakes of a decade in 4 years. The policies on other controversial issues, such as gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and environmental issues differ greatly between the candidates, and hopefully they will be dictated out at the debates to come.The coming month is the time where undecided voters should sit down and look at the facts; hopefully, rationale would enable them to come to the right decision, whatever that may be.